


Spoils of War

by CarryOnMyWaywardCastiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fantasy AU, M/M, Magic AU, Oblivious Dean, Pining Dean, Wingfic, slave Cas, slavery (prisoners of war), soldier Cas, zero dub/non-con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 11:51:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarryOnMyWaywardCastiel/pseuds/CarryOnMyWaywardCastiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is Dean's mentor, caretaker, and friend. As a child, it's relatively easy to ignore the old war and pretend that Castiel is just another servant in his distant father's employ.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spoils of War

 “Hey, Cas?”

“Yes, Mr. Winchester?”

“C'mon, stop that. Who am I?”

“Dean Winchester.”

“One and only. And who's Mr. Winchester?”

“Your father.”

“Exactly.”

“And yourself.”

“Way to miss the point, Cas.” Dean leans back against the trunk of the tree he's sitting in and suspiciously watches Castiel weed his mother's flower plot below him. Castiel is as calm and quiet as ever, so simple and honest and stupidly _clean_ , but Dean's been around him long enough to suspect that he's being teased.

And there it is, not a smile, but a quick rippling of the muscles of his enormous wings, over in a split second.

“You laughing at me?”

“Certainly not, Mr. Winchester.” There it is again, the little quivering of his dusty feathers, like a deck of cards being shuffled and neatly settled back together. This time he does smile, a small smile that's more a softening of the eyes than a turn of the lips, and Dean beams back at him a little too encouragingly. Castiel's real smiles are few and far between, and Dean gets a little thrill out of earning something so hard-won every time.

Almost as soon as he sees it, it's gone, and Dean is left with Castiel's serene, neutral face again. Not that he exactly minds; Castiel's calm is something that Dean naturally gravitates to, always has. He's been told (and thoroughly embarrassed from) stories by his aunt about how a much younger Dean had always clung to Castiel's pants leg or long flight feathers at the first sign of distress, and it isn't hard to understand why. Castiel is old, strong, and practically eternal, to Dean's young eyes. His biggest problem is that he thinks Castiel is also the most beautiful creature he's ever been near, and he isn't sure why.

“You had a task for me, Mr. Winchester?” Castiel interrupts Dean's thoughts quietly, without stopping or looking up from his busy hands tending the flowerbed. His voice is nothing like him, Dean decides. His voice, though he uses it as softly as he can manage, is deep and rough, sometimes even sharp like a close crack of thunder.

“Huh? Oh. No, a question. How come you do it like that? Can't you just...” Dean gestures vaguely with both hands. As far as he knows from what little had been covered on the subject during his tutoring (and the extra tidbits he sometimes gleans from his uncle and father's few other servants), every bound member of Castiel's species still has access to a little of their magic. Nothing but a wisp of their unbound power, but it does make it easier for them to care for a home and family. Dean is more than used to stumbling into the kitchen in the morning and seeing Castiel busy making breakfast while the broom sweeps the floor and the ingredients for that night's dinner rapidly clean and chop themselves right into a pot.

Once, when he and Sammy were bold enough to try to sneak out through the back door without their baths, Castiel had appeared with a pile of laundry teetering precariously in his arms, saw them, and flicked a finger in their direction with the slightest roll of his eyes. Immediately they were attacked by wet wash cloths scrubbing their faces vigorously even as they tried to run away (they had gotten stern looks when they came home and no candy slipped in their dinner napkins that night).

Castiel is quiet for a long moment, though he pauses in his work and rocks back on his heels, his forearms resting lightly on his knees. It takes him a few seconds to gather his thoughts and look up at Dean, and when he does the sight is as confusingly breathtaking as it has been recently. Dean doesn't think that Castiel's eyes change colors, because that's stupid, but they almost seem to at that moment. With the sun brushing against his open face, they're soft and bright, though Dean's guilty of spending enough time staring into Castiel's eyes to know they're normally deep, muted.

“I suppose I could,” he slowly replies, “But I would much rather tend them as I am.” Castiel squints up at him in confusion. “Is there something you would rather I do?”

Dean shrugs and kicks his feet. “Nah. You always got a hell of a lot to do,” Castiel gives him a sharp look at the curse, but doesn't reprimand him for it. He never does, not directly. Most of the time he prefers a more passive-aggressive approach to discipline, which means baths drawn just this side of too cold and mysterious disappearances of favorite toys until Castiel thinks a lesson has been learned. “And you don't mind using your magic for most of it. Makes it easier. But you do this so slow.”

Castiel's face clears of confusion and he nods thoughtfully, his brow furrowed and his head tilted slightly to one side. Dean knows that look. Sees it all the time, just before Castiel teaches him something “profound.”

“How did your mother care for her garden, Mr. Winchester? Did she do it with magic?” he finally asks, wearing an odd, inscrutable expression.

Dean scowls down at him. He never asked to be made fun of, and Cas knows that he doesn't like it when people bring up his mother. “She didn't _have_ magic.”

“Exactly,” Castiel quickly replies. “She had no magic. Do you remember how beautiful her flowers were, Dean?”

The familiar, fond use of his name instead of his title snaps him out of any scathing retort he might have given. In all his twelve years of life, he only remembers Castiel calling him by his name when Dean needed soothing, and only ever when they were alone.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, because some of his earliest memories are of his mother singing or laughing or chatting happily to Castiel, who always worked in her garden beside her, never for her (he doesn't know why that part seems important to him, but it does). Castiel's flowers are beautiful, but they're no match for Dean's memories.

When Castiel speaks again, he speaks slowly and earnestly, staring too intensely at Dean for him to even think of looking away.

“Her flowers were extraordinary because of her own work, not because they were forced by magic. That they decided to grow beautifully every year was their own decision coaxed by Mary Winchester's love and hard work. Do you understand?”

He knows that Castiel's trying to tell him something important, but he can't figure out what it is, and he doesn't want Castiel to think he's stupid for guessing wrong. Dean knows from experience that Castiel would never intentionally make him feel bad for not knowing something he hasn't had the chance to learn yet, but even so he shrugs and smirks down at him.

“Flowers can't _choose_ to grow or not, Cas.” His face falls almost immediately with the realization that he's said something wrong when Castiel sighs softly, shifts his wings against the spell-etched harness holding them tightly bound, and goes back to the slow, steady task of pruning and weeding Mary's garden.

“No, I don't suppose they can.”

**Author's Note:**

> I took a prompt that was assigned to me during a fic exchange (that ended up being cancelled, sadly) and ran a little wild with it. Anyway, in case anyone was wondering, this fic will not contain underage. Harass me on my tumblr (nephilicious) if I don't update before too long.


End file.
